Dare To Share Your Untold Story

At around eight years of age, she identifies as the last generation born in Estonia, Maria was raised in the Soviet Union, taught the Russian language, and brought up amidst chaos where the country was re-starting from the ground up, in addition to being abandoned by her father. At the age of fourteen, she watched Western culture on TV, which inspired her to be there one day. During her upbringing...

Cindy conveys that no one really understands what a marriage is going through behind closed doors and what it is like to be married to a 'covert narcissist'. She shares that this is a difficult personality to identify and has a grave impact on a person's sense of worth and mental well-being. She describes the experience to include gas-lighting, subtle and unseen manipulations, and a great deal of...

Svetlana's story begins when she talks about building her first business in Russia, during a time where she had to deal with not-organized Russian Mafia. She claims it was a disaster as the Mafia were forming different groups. As soon as privatization was born in her country, that meant she could own a business, and so she immediately took her first steps to get registered and started her venture....

Shelly uncovers what it was like to be bullied at school, residing in a small town where there are 'small town unspoken rules' to abide by, dating all the way back during her pre-teen and teen years, and the emphasis on one particular year that took a toll on her overall mental well-being. It is from this experience that she believes self-worth has been her core life-long issue in her journey and...

Parul goes all in to talk about what it is like to struggle with anxiety, depression, and insomnia and when all three came to heads with each other -- there was no amount of   coping strategies or tools to equip her for what she was facing on her own. She openly shares how much she internalized and protected herself from the outside world and how this translated as showing up as high functioning d...

Rish takes time to open up and share aspects of her entire journey which she has not openly shared to others outside her social circle and made some poignant connections with grief literacy. Rish converses about the multi roles that she played being a daughter, caregiver to both her parents while studying in university and now wife and mother. She describes how tragedy she witnessed as very young...

Farahana shares how she has encountered a great deal of emotional pain and suffering through her life and took the time to expose publicly for the first time the traumas of growing up. She discloses being raised in a household where her parents did not get along, there was physical abuse that she witnessed, and she learned to set her own needs aside to become her mother's referee and protector. Wi...

Shirin's untold story is mostly a told story at this point; however, she connects deeper to share vulnerable aspects that light is not often shed on. She speaks about two dysfunctional marriages she experienced and how it all started when she became a single mother. She moved to Canada to start her second marriage and quickly learned that this is not the life that was promised to her, while enduri...

Carys straight away delves into the sharing of her story, where she describes the gruesome night at age 11 where her father was murdered by a stranger who broke into their home, the impact it had on the family dynamics, surviving loss and re-stabilization. She shares that there was an almost immediate dis-ease that entered her body, telling her that she could never be safe or have fun and will nee...

Dr. Shemine Gulamhusein shares that as a young person she struggled to understand the value of reading, writing, along with finding her sense of belonging. It was only after she started to play sports actively in her pre-teen years that she began noticing an increased sense of self-worth and belonging and saw a significant improvement in her academics. She delved right in to share the difficulties...

Rishma unveils a heart-wrenching story about losing her husband to cancer and the journey through being his caregiver and knowing that their time together was limited. She described and detailed her husband's character viewed by many -- he was a magnet towards all people. She portrays that her personal grief journey is like that of peeling and unravelling of an onion, with each grief layer looking...

Asante opens up about a childhood that is filled with instability, lack of response, lack of support, and coping in survival mode. He shares his learnings about how life is not linear, it is unpredictable, filled with disappointment and triumphs. He talks about his story through the lens of race, equity, understanding problems and looking for solutions. Asante describes the hope he represented to...

Kelly talks about what it was like to grow up in an extremely patriarchal environment, where women were supposed to be a certain way, where they needed to come across as nice, to be not outspoken, to be educated, but to also be geared towards marriage and children as the completion of what all is meant to be for a woman. She shares how it's hard to constantly be fighting to be acknowledged and to...

Sheliza dives into a conversation where she explores what it is like to consider both surviving and thriving in order to make it in the world. She delves into internalized emotions that she endured along the way like, sadness, anxiety, shame. She balanced many competing identities related to social identities, racial trauma and imposter syndrome. She shares denying her own roots, rejecting her ide...

As Nadia begins to tap into her story, she shares that leading up to her university graduation ceremony, she was feeling incredibly sick for 4-6 weeks, going in and out of medical clinics without any answers, until ended up visiting the local emergency room at age 24, this is where she learned of the cancer diagnoses. She described this part of her story as her degree comes with a diagnosis. Nadia...

Mr. X speaks about the initial struggles that his family endured when his family first immigrated to Canada, and as his story unfolds, he unveils what it was like to grow up with being a recipient of both physical and verbal abuse. He shares about how all the emotional pain churned inside him, leaving him confused and second-guessing his actions and pursuits in life. Mr. X shares how his upbringin...

Barbara authentically shares what it was like growing up with severe learning difficulties, having no known diagnosis at the time. She was pressed to carve and navigate her own path through feeling that she couldn't fit in, feeling that going to school was meant to 'feel stupid', feeling ashamed that she couldn't learn what others could, that at times it got so emotionally and mentally unruly that...

Ross' story began when he was just 5 years old, when his father was arrested for a white-collared crime, and though Ross was witness to this, he has no recollection of this time in his life. Ross openly talks about how this experience manifested into a multitude of emotions and behaviours as a young child. He talks about dysregulated emotions where he would act out physically, destroying all his b...

Amy tells her full journey filled with turmoil and shares what she endured that culminates the story of loss, unknowingly becoming the sacrificial lamb of the family, a marriage filled with uncertainty, battling cancer twice, and reeling in with all her might walking away to start a new beginning. She spoke about how perfectionism kept her stuck in a domestic situation where she endured verbal, em...

Mary takes the plunge and dives right in to speak about what it is like to go through an already long journey of her and her partner to be together, and then to be hit with a curveball when she least expected. She shares about how she quickly went from being newlyweds with exciting new beginnings, to becoming a 24/7 caregiver to her husband. Mary talked about the devastation of her husband's illne...

In her sit down, Dr. Saira without holding back, shares her story about her journey with depression, the depth and impact of her most recent depressive episode, living through food addiction and how she copes in day-to-day life with it, and how this all showed up in its fullest form after an encounter with her brother, who at the time, was homeless and suffering through addiction of his own, and d...

Rahim shares and details his intimate experience with coming out to his family and identifying himself as part of the LGBTQ community. He took the time to explain that the journey was a long process, it takes time, there are more parts than he realized that are part of the coming out process. He took the time to walk through several elements of his journey, including the parts where he was questio...

Clarity sits down to talk about the depth of dark times in her journey as she shares about having no healthy memories of her childhood, having endured trauma, physical abuse and patriarchy. She talks about how she was desperate for love, affection and attention. She shares how she felt misunderstood and disconnected from her father, brother and sister, and because her mother was the only person in...

Reena talks about what it is like to be diagnosed with a skin condition known as psoriasis from the young age of 14, and how it remained unacknowledged for about 17 years. She shares how she lived a life defined with pain, self-hate and denial. Reena shares that for so long, no one knew what she was truly bearing inside of her, she believed that her thoughts were actually just thoughts of vanity a...

With vulnerability, Farah shares the unimaginable experience of carrying a twin pregnancy close to full term, learning that one baby passed away and that she had to carry on the pregnancy to keep the other alive. She shares that there is always more to a person's story than what we may know looking from the outside in. Farah shares her experience of what it was like to connect with her stillborn b...